Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

That morning when Heimerdinger arrived on campus there was a buzzing crowd of students on the quadrangle. The dean drifted closer to listen in, hoping he would hear discussion of physics or the recent Winter Fest concert (which he had much enjoyed). What he was not expecting were the odds and ends of a tale of a student’s forcible removal from campus, presumed expulsion, and very possible arrest. To appease his morbid curiosity about the whole affair he eavesdropped (as subtly as possible). The details he collected were as follows: 1. There were six enforcers who had come on campus looking for this student. 2. They were fully armed and armoured. 3. The student in question was a boy from the Undercity, and that was where he supposed the truth ended. There had been some kind of general consensus about the number of enforcers (with a few outliers on the grandest scale) and no one doubted where the subject of the arrest was from. However, the crimes the young man was accused of by his fellows were plentiful and varied. Arson came up. Assault did too. Murder. A museum heist. Etc.

There were two options presented that made the most sense to Heimerdinger. One was that he had been dealing Undercity drugs on campus, poisoning these bright young minds, and was also physically dangerous to an extreme. A sound hypothesis that Heimerdinger felt would justify six enforcers. The other was that he had been part of…well…that business on the bridge two months ago. Those seemed the most reasonable in terms of what a student could do and the reaction he would receive.

Still it was upsetting on all sides. Very sad. He was still considering this whole ordeal, puzzling over the details, when he entered the library. It seemed he was not the only one who was pensive today. One of the librarians, a young woman named Sana, was sitting quietly and distractedly behind the desk. Across her lap she had what appeared to be a cane of some kind. She was looking down at it, holding it tightly and with a strange solemnity.

“I do hope you’re on the mend, dear girl,” he said companionably.

She started from her thoughts, blinked as if to clear her vision. “Oh, hello professor. How can I help you?”

“Not to worry, I can fend for myself, especially if you’ve been injured,” Heimerdinger said with a wave of his hand.

“If I’ve been injured?” she asked, confused. He glanced at her again as she looked down at the cane, as if for the first time, seemingly realizing what she was doing. Her grip loosened and her expression became woebegone. “This isn’t mine.”

“Did someone leave it behind then? They can’t have gone far!”

“He didn’t want to leave it behind,” she said in a voice becoming increasingly choked, “they wouldn’t let him…”

“Who would do such a thing?” Heimerdinger asked, agast.

“The enforcers.”

His heart thudded in his chest. Ah, the mystery student.

Perhaps he had been part of that thwarted attack on Piltover. Perhaps he had been injured there badly enough to warrant a cane. Perhaps the enforcers had been tracking this dangerous man. Then six enforcers wasn’t excessive. They had done their math.

“That belongs to the student who was removed then?” he asked.

She let out a short dark laugh, “Yes, they ‘removed’ him right in front of the desk and I didn’t even say anything. I should’ve said something.”

“Was he here often?” Heimerdinger asked, a library seemed a very backwards place to arrest someone and he doubted enforcers would storm a location, especially hallowed ground such as this, without reason.

“All the time!”

“So perhaps you’ve spoken to him...” Heimerdinger said leadingly.

“Not a lot. But only because he’s very quiet. I don't think he talks much to anyone. His name is Viktor.”

“Do you happen to know how Viktor was injured?”

“By the enforcers, you mean?” Sana asked, and Heimerdinger winced, his ears lowering. There were always the bad apples, but perhaps the...exchange had looked rougher than it was.

“Before that. For the cane.”

“He’s always had it.”

“Since you met him?”

“Since before that. I’m sure he’d had it since he was a kid. Maybe since he could walk. It always seemed a rather rude thing to ask.”

Well this was a very different image than the one the students outside painted. A quiet, studious young man who walked with a cane didn’t seem the type to riot or sell drugs, Undercity or not.

“They just cornered him!” she said suddenly as if she couldn’t stop herself. “He was with some other students and the enforcers — why did they send more than one or two? The enforcers were all around my desk and poor Viktor getting boxed in. He was about as loud as I’ve ever heard him, told the enforcers he was a student here and that he wasn’t going anywhere with them alone.” That also seemed curious. Where was one safer than with a whole sextet of enforcers? “Then one of them managed to get close enough and just…” she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Heimerdinger expected handcuffs to be the next prop in the story and his stomach lurched when they didn’t come. “They kicked his bad leg out from under him and grabbed him before he could get up. The sound he made when he went down…it must have been…I could have done something. They dragged him out after that and I saw the look in his eyes and I should have done something!” One of her coworkers a few shelves deeper into the room shushed her. Sana lowered her voice and her gaze, “and now it’s too late.”

The story was terrible and troubling to the extreme. Heimerdinger looked at the cane in her hands. It was a smooth dark metal, with what appeared to be brass on both ends, a tip at the bottom and a heavy handle at the top with an almost exaggerated curve. He hadn’t seen one quite like it. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps the enforcers thought it could be used as a cudgel. It probably could.

“Do you think he was in the riots?”

“Viktor?! Sir, even if he didn’t have…” she wiggled the cane, “this, the only crime I think Viktor is capable of is keeping library books past their due date. He’s nice.”

“Hm,” said Heimerdinger thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I take that?” he said, gesturing to the cane. When she looked taken aback he reassured her. “I’ll see that it gets back to him.”

She looked down at it, then at Heimerdinger, then back again. She handed it off. Obviously it was more a staff than a cane in Heimerdinger’s hands but that wasn’t a concern. Stepping out of the library he realized that there was a switch at the base of the handle above his head. Curious, Heimerdinger ducked into the nearby experimental sciences building and found an unoccupied lab. He lit the lights, tossed the cane onto a table from below, then staggered up a high stool with much difficulty. They needed more yordle sized equipment. The effort was worth it. The handle was very oddly balanced, and the button released a mechanism that allowed the handle to open on a hinge. The cane was empty which was a little disappointing but it was a clever little hiding place. Prodding the interior revealed that it was lined with a spongy material the same color as the cane, so the hidden object wouldn’t clang or rattle inside, he thought. Though Heimerdinger still wasn’t sure why the handle was shaped and weighted as it was.

The door to the classroom opened again and Heimerdiner turned to see Nayan, a biochemistry professor, tall (even by human standards) and entirely gray-haired though not old (even by human standards). He had a steaming mug in one hand and some papers in his mouth, although after closing the door he removed those. He glanced up at the lights, frowned, searching the room. When his eyes fell on Heimerdinger his gaze softened.

“Welcome to my humble classroom, sir,” he said in a friendly tone as he crossed to him. “I was wondering why the lights were on.”

“Hello, Nayan, you won’t mind the intrusion, I hope.”

He had just taken a sip of what smelled like very strong coffee but shook his head. “You can stay as long as you like. I was just gonna…” he grinned in a mirthless way, “well, sulk in the dark, really.”

“Sulk? Why?”

Nayan noticed the cane on the table and pointed to it with the hand holding the papers, “That’s why, Viktor,” he said.

Another surge of interest shot through Heimerdinger. Nayan was going to sulk in the dark? Did the boy upset him or was he upset for the boy? Which Viktor would this be? The one described on the quadrangle or the one from the library?

“Is he a student of yours?” Heimerdinger asked.

“Yes. One of the best.” Then he clarified, “and I don’t mean the best of his year or the best right now. I mean he is one of the best students I have ever had.”

“That is certainly high praise!” said Heimerdinger, impressed.

“And I don’t say it lightly,” Nayan said.

“Do you know him very well?” Heimerdinger asked.

Nayan gave a one-shouldered shrug, “well enough.”

“Is he nice?” he asked, borrowing Sana’s word.

Nayan frowned as if he hadn’t been expecting that. “Yeah, I’d say so. Quiet, mostly. Ambitious. But yeah, sure, usually very nice.”

“And unusually?”

“Sometimes he gets into it with the TA, but the TA runs his mouth and gets knocked down a peg for it.” his eyes scanned the cane in a quiet moment then he added, “I was actually hoping to make Viktor TA next year. We were trying to get a side project of his started. And who doesn’t need a little extra cash?”

“May I inquire as to the nature of the project?” Heimerdinger asked, intrigued.

“Cheap air filters, like masks. We could use ‘em up here but gods’ know how bad they need ‘em down there,” he said looking into the depths of his mug, bitter as the coffee seemed to be.

“What a magnanimous act!” said Heimerdinger, impressed.

“Well, it certainly would have been,” Nayan said darkly.

“Oh, yes,” Heimerdinger slumped. “Do you know his crime, by any chance?”

“I’ve already heard the half dozen stories shooting around campus. I’m sure you have too. I don’t believe any of ‘em. Don’t pass my smell test.”

“You don’t think he could be violent?”

“Nah. He doesn’t have it in him, sir. And I don’t just mean because of the bum leg. It’s not in his nature. He’s reasonable and he wants to help people, not hurt them.”

“You believe he’s innocent, then.”

He did not expect Nayan to tip his head to the side, with a skeptical look. “Depends,” he said after a moment of consideration.

“On what?”

“On how you define ‘innocent’. I think I know what he was doing wrong, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It is.”

“Wanting to learn.”

Heimerdinger was struck hard enough by that phrase that he was surprised to have remained on the stool. He wanted to ponder over that “crime” for hours. By now he was fascinated by this mysterious young man.

“Do you know who his other teachers are, by any chance?” he asked.

Armed with that information and the unfortunate subject’s cane Heimerdinger made his way around to Viktor’s professors. The Viktor they constructed was a brilliant young man, quiet but curious, shy but driven. He excelled in his science and math courses. He never spoke in his history class but did well enough on the assignments. (That also appeared to be his only humanities course, but maybe he had gotten the other requirements out of the way last year.) He was always in class even when he probably should have been in a sickbed. He didn’t have many friends, or, seemingly any as of late. He had had a core group of misfits but recently he was always alone. His physics course was in a lecture hall of 200, where Viktor only existed in his near-perfect marks and messy handwriting, he had never caused a fuss or even came in late.

When Heimerdinger asked what he had done, both to end up by himself and to get ejected from campus, three of the professors were genuinely baffled, but the last one, Mina Damarlo, Viktor’s classical mechanics professor, had the same sort of mysterious ambivalence as Nayan. Or maybe Heimerdinger just wanted to know badly enough to imagine that.

He got his answer from the newest member of staff. Jule was a geography professor who had been hired about a fortnight ago. He wasn’t one of Viktor’s teachers, but when he saw Viktor’s cane in the dean’s hand he looked smug, smug enough to catch Heimerdinger off guard. He paused and rerouted, what had been a nod in Jule’s direction would now be a conversation. Heimerdinger had a disturbing hypothesis to test.

“You’re welcome, sir,” he said proudly as Heimerdinger approached, chest puffed out rather like a pigeon.

“Am I? Is there a specific reason?” Heimerdinger asked.

“For getting that Undercity leech thrown back where he came from, of course!”

Hypothesis proven.

“Why did you report Viktor?” Heimerdinger asked, more solemnly than intended.

The look of pride was quickly fading into furrowed brow concern. “He was making a mockery of this sacred institution! He was laughing at us!”

“Not literally laughing, I expect. What did he do wrong?”

The concern on Jule’s face became more urgent. “He wasn’t even enrolled, sir! He never took the entrance exam and he never paid to attend! He lied to everyone! And the ones who figured it out were just looking the other way! He probably stole a uniform so he could—”

“Learn?” Heimerdinger asked as Nayan’s prediction manifested itself. All the pride had washed from Jule’s deflated form.

The worst part was Jule was right, as much as the realization pained Heimerdinger. The conclusion he came to, to report the non-student, was the correct one, as per rules Heimerdinger had helped write. It wasn’t fair to those who enrolled properly. Viktor was, in a way — a real way — stealing from them and their families. That wasn’t fair, but this still didn’t feel right. This…well, not “expulsion” because one had to be a student to be expelled, and semantics were important. “Removal” was too benign. The word his mind settled on was “rejection” and that came with a host of other complicating implications that made his stomach churn. He mentally erased the “R”. Ejection.

Jule looked like he would defend himself, but Heimerdinger reassured him. “Thank you, professor. You did your due diligence.”

“I did,” he agreed with a sigh of relief.

“We must follow the laws and regulations of this city and this institution, lest we descend into anarchy,” Heimerdinger said, reminding himself even more than Jule.

It was then that Heimerdinger decided to find Viktor, although at that point he couldn’t have explained why. Not in any satisfactory or logical way. He simply had to! That would mean a trip across the river, into Piltover’s Undercity. There were some who crossed the bridges often (navigating necessary checkpoints these days in the wake of the attack) but Heimerdinger was not one of them. He didn’t have the need, desire, or time to visit the Undercity. However he knew it would be rough and he might not be welcome if tensions were still high. So he wore a cloak and brought along his poro as extra defense. The enforcers at the checkpoints each tried to deter him and none seemed convinced of his pet’s effectiveness, but Heimerdinger’s plan was in motion and he would not be swayed.

He feared Viktor would be much harder to track in the Undercity. But as soon as he crossed the bridge, just by the elevator he found a perhaps gently intoxicated transient whose mind and narrative he could pick for clues.

“Excuse me, sir!” Heimerdinger said and the man swung his head around to face him.

“What do you want?” he asked. Heimerdinger never understood why some people were so quick to judge and snap. But he gave this man the benefit of the doubt. He seemed to be in a bit of a rough patch.

“I’m looking for someone. A boy, around 19, he would be wearing an Academy uniform and…” Heimerdinger looked at the cane in his own hand, “and very probably walk with a limp.”

He was surprised how readily the man answered after his initial outburst.

“Yeah, I seen him,” he took a swig from whatever foul smelling fluid was concealed in the paper bag he held. “And ‘limp’ ain’t half of it.”

“‘Ain’t half’, I’ve always found that a curious expression, it leads one to wonder how our perceptions of the world are quantified, doesn’t it?”

“No,” the transient answered shortly.

“What is the other half, then?” Heimerdinger asked, disappointed that his attempts at friendliness had failed to elicit the same.

“Somebody clobbered him and clobbered him good.”

“I believe he’s always had trouble walking.”

“‘Trouble walking’?” It was now this man’s turn to incredulously repeat his conversation partner’s turn of phrase. “Trouble walking, he says! He was barely on his godsdamn feet, dragging himself along, swaying like a drunk. He stopped a whole buncha times, sitting on the ground, looking like he might hurl. Somebody walloped your guy! Blood on his shirt, blood on his face, black eye, fat lip, the works. Kid looked like he’d been in the Noxian fighting pits. And lost.”

“Those are usually fights to the death,” Heimerdinger said, alarmed.

“Yeah, I know,” said the man darkly with another swig.

That did not match up with the nonviolent and quiet boy his teachers knew, but likely, and horribly, this had not been an intentional fight. Viktor had been intercepted and ill-treated.

“Do you know where he went?”

“Huh. I might. But my memory’s a little hazy…” he looked expectantly at Heimerdinger.

“Is there some way I can help?”

“Yeah, you know, grease my palm and my brain might catch up.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Give me money and I’ll tell you,” he said flatly.

“Ah, well, I don’t like being ransomed like this but it is pressing,” he said, dropping some gold into the man’s grubby hand. The man’s eyebrows shot up and he peered at Heimerdinger with a sharpness he hadn’t displayed before. Then the man shrugged, pocketed the gold and muttered, “ain’t my business.”

“Where did he go?” Heimerdinger pressed.

“Kid comes through here most evenings. These days he heads just around the sun line.”

“These days? Was there another location prior?”

“Maybe…might need another reminder.”

“I’m only asking out of concern for his health.”

“That’s nice of you. I’m only asking ‘cause I wanna eat tonight.”

Heimerdinger sighed and dropped a few more coins in the man’s expectant hand and watched him stifle a grin. “Used to go to the Fissures.”

“Do you know why he changed destinations?”

“Brother, I just see where he pulls the lever before the elevator leaves,” he said, punctuating the declaration with a deep draught.

“I see. Thank you for your time,” Heimerdinger said, feeling miserable.

The man raised his bottle in reply.

Heimerdinger gestured for his poro to follow and they stepped onto the lift.

“Hope you find your boy,” the man said as the gate tried to close and failed to do so.

“As do I,” Heimerdinger said, “as do I.” He felt the man’s eyes on him until the lift sank out of sight.

It took time but Heimerdinger finally found Viktor’s trail again, now in a small neighborhood that mostly avoided the artificial night he knew Piltover’s shadow painted everywhere from the Lanes to the Fissures. Judging by the sun’s current position he thought there would only be a few hours of daylight lost here.

He hadn’t been recognized since the man by the bridge…might have done. After a while he let the hood of his cloak fall and it hadn’t changed that fact. People walked past him without a thought. It was a strange sensation given he could not visit the corner store in Piltover without being recognized as councilor, dean, and/or inventor as had been the case for nearly 200 years. He supposed there might not be a wide distribution of newspapers here.

Beside the columns of rundown homes and in the shadow of a factory, criss-crossed with vines but still chugging along, was a market. Not a large one, but there were stalls selling food, cloth, cheap lamp oil, even cheaper alcohol.

He was still intent on his quest, carrying his charge when the woman manning the bakery stall looked up at him and froze. She had been assessing her nearly depleted stock of cakes and donuts, then caught sight of what Heimerdinger knew must have been a rather peculiar picture in front of her, a yordle with a cane like a shepherd’s crook, his flock composed of one poro. Then her eyes fell onto that make-do crook.

“Oh shit, did something happen to Viktor?”

Finally!

“You know him?”

“Yeah,” she frowned, then her look softened to worry. She reached out for the cane, although he was a little too far away and remained as such. “What happened to him? Why’ve you got his cane, furball?” She didn’t even say the insult like it was an insult, just a descriptor. It was a very strange way of speaking. The poro growled at her and she blinked down at it, unimpressed.

“He…there was an incident and I am trying to return it to him,” Heimerdinger said.

“Yeah, I bet there was,” said the woman at the butcher’s stall beside the baker’s. Her wares of meat and cheese would not have gone over well in Piltover (and Heimerdinger wasn’t sure how they made it past a health inspection). As she worked she smoked a pipe that was clamped so tightly between her yellowed teeth Heimerdinger expected either they or the stem would shatter.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

“‘Cause he goes topside,” she said, aggressively chopping up some unknown animal as she spoke. “Every morning he comes through here and every morning I tell him it’s not too late to turn his crippled ass around and get a job at the factory or go back to the Fissures. Even for somebody like him they’re both safer. Hell, he could beg if he had to, but nothing good happens topside, not when it’s one of us,” she gestured with her cleaver to herself and the baker. “You rich fucks always find some excuse!”

He resisted the defensive urge to say that over or under rules were rules. Viktor had broken the rules, the punishment followed. It was hardly ‘some excuse’. Viktor shouldn’t have been hurt, but ultimately (and as Heimerdinger had to keep reminding himself) his ejection was the only fair solution.

“Rowen, we don’t even know what happened,” said the baker gently.

“Of course we do!” Rowen snapped, punctuating the next two words by throwing her cleaver onto her cutting board, “nothing good.”

“What’s everybody yelling about?” asked a boy who certainly should have been at school and not out on the street. He was carrying a jar of yellowish oil and what appeared to be a bag of tobacco.

“Viktor’s dead,” said Rowen.

“Furry Viktor or Viktor with the leg?” the boy asked.

“Leg,” said Rowen.

“I can assure you he isn’t dead,” Heimerdinger said.

“Oh, that’s good. He fixed my bike, so he’s pretty cool,” said the boy.

“What happened to him?” The baker asked Heimerdinger.

“What happened to who?” Another voice joined in from across the aisle, this was the man who sold the boy the oil judging from his tabletop covered in unmarked glass jars of similar fluid. They were all repurposed jars, Heimerdinger realized, some — like a certain soft drink bottle — were unmistakable.

“Viktor,” said the boy.

“Old and crazy Viktor or Smart Viktor?” he asked.

“Smart.”

That, Heimerdinger thought, was infinitely preferable to having “the leg”.

“Told that kid nothing good comes from topside!” said the oil man, shaking his head.

“That’s what I’m saying!” said Rowen.

“Yeah! Topside sucks!” said the boy with far too much glee. Heimerdinger tried to gently correct him, but the man was still speaking and far louder than he ever could.

“He thinks he gets it! He’s worse than my kids! Pushing his luck like that! I told him, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you know shit. I knew Piltover was gonna rip him apart as soon as he mentioned that stupid fucking Academy!”

“Fuck the Academy!” said the boy. Heimerdinger kept his mouth shut tightly.

“Watch your damn mouth, you go home swearing like that and Sen’s not just gonna beat your ass, she’ll come down here to do us too!”

“Worst part about it is he can’t even run! Built like a string bean—”

“‘Bout the height of one, too,” offered the man, turning his attention back to Rowen.

“—And he can’t even run,” said Rowen. “Say somebody wants to take a piece outta him. What’s he going to do?”

“Nothing. Get his ass beat,” said the man. “I’d bet you anything that that’s exactly what happened. He got his ass beat and now the enforcers got him locked up somewhere.”

“Is he coming back?” the boy asked nervously. “What if my bike breaks?”

“And now this Piltie shows up and says—” Rowen, the oil salesman, and the boy continued to discuss what could have happened, as they said, “topside”, but the baker gestured for Heimerdinger to come closer.

“The fact that you came down here to give him back his cane is very kind. He spends a lot of time in the factory. And give him this from me,” she cut off a hunk of one of the cakes on the table, a yellowish spiced thing. She barehanded it into some wax paper then passed it to him.

“Thank you, madam,” Heimerdinger said. It seemed his journey was nearly over and the token of affection warmed him considerably.

Upon entering the factory he passed through an empty lobby and walked into not so much a room as onto a steel balcony. The factory had been built into the cliff-face, so it stood to reason that coming in on the ground floor did not mean there was nothing below. And below this platform was the factory floor and the assembly line dotted with living workers. There was immense machinery running smoothly on all sides. It the walls like the vines outside, came out of the floor, and loomed overhead. The only living being on this level was a lanky young man who was standing beside a large control panel, packed with long levers.

The boy must have been about Academy age, he was leaning against the wall bouncing a little nervously on his toes, but quietly reading what appeared to be some sort of sci-fi serial, battered and torn though it was Heimerdinger could see the imaginary spaceship on the front cover. He realized with momentary alarm that one of the young man’s hands appeared to be skeletal and blackened, but that alarm quickly became something like delight as what he was seeing clicked. A pneumatic prosthetic arm! Incredible!

As Heimerdinger watched something began to thump on the assembly line. The boy barely looked up from his magazine as he picked through the levers beside him. Finding the one he was looking for and putting one foot up against the panel for leverage, he pulled it down with the loud protest of metal on metal. Below one of the manned stations sighed and hissed and shot a pillar of steam upward. Satisfied, the young man turned back to his magazine.

“Excuse me, my boy,” Heimerdinger said.

The boy glanced up then stared, wide-eyed. He snatched the hat off his own head as if to show respect. “Are you Heimerdinger? Like the council guy?”

“I am indeed the council guy. I’m looking for Viktor. Er, Smart Viktor,” he added.

The young man stared for another second, looked like he might speak, then silently pointed up the metal staircase with his replacement limb.

“Many thanks,” Heimerdinger nodded and he and his poro began to make the dicey ascent.

“Hey!” the young man called after him.

Heimerdinger turned, “yes?”

“Whatever they said Viktor did, he didn’t do! He was working here all day and I can vouch for him!”

“There won’t be any need for it,” Heimerdinger assured him.

Chapter Text

This was how Viktor’s day had gone thus far.

He was in the library, finishing up his history homework with about 45 minutes until class, when a first year girl came running up to the next table and excitedly announced to her friend that there were enforcers on campus and they were looking for someone. The friend gasped and asked who. The first girl didn’t know. She sat down beside her friend and the two immediately began speculating about the culprit. Viktor’s blood ran cold the moment she said “enforcers”. He knew exactly who they were looking for.

It was him.

About a week ago Viktor had been confronted by a teacher, not one of his and not one he had ever seen before. He knew Viktor was from the Undercity, everyone did. Viktor wasn’t ashamed. He hadn’t tried to hide it, knowing any attempt to do so would only complicate matters. Besides, it had been handy last year when he’d started sneaking into classes. If and when anyone pressed him on his credentials he would ask if they were inquiring simply because he was from the Undercity. This would usually make them bluster and stammer and leave, lest they seem like they were discriminating. Since then he had made himself enough of a fixture that no one asked. The other students never thought anything of it. Some of the teachers might have worked out his game, but if they had they kept it quiet.

But things had gotten harder since the would-be Zaunite revolution failed on the bridge. Topside was scared. They distrusted the Undercity even more now and as its sole representative at the Academy Viktor had borne the brunt of it. But this incident was the first time he had been threatened with expulsion.

Viktor did what he had done previously, asked the teacher if it was because he was from the Undercity. And this man instead of denying it, looked Viktor in the eye and told him that it was. He was certain Viktor wasn’t supposed to be there and if he, Viktor, didn’t come clean and leave apparently this hotshot geography teacher would go to the authorities with proof.

Viktor hadn’t. He had called this man’s bluff. To prove Viktor didn’t belong there he would need to get access to and wade through filing cabinets full of records. Viktor had already been there a year, he wouldn’t be near the surface. There had been other Viktors, some with c’s, some with k’s. Even if Jule managed to get to the right documents, he would still be trying to prove a negative. Maybe Viktor’s receipt got lost. Maybe someone spilled coffee on his test results.

Would the satisfaction of his expulsion be worth the headache of proving it was necessary? Viktor doubted it. He had been threatened before and found the best option was always to remain calm. This would work out, he would be fine, he just had to be smart. This man had to really hate him to put the required energy into a student who he never had to actually interact with.

And for a week nothing happened. He was just starting to think he was in the clear, but he’d let his guard down too early. It seemed Jule finally found the evidence he needed, or the lack of it.

Viktor closed his book, tried not to panic, tried not to throw up, he couldn’t just freeze up as much as his body seemed to want to lock him in place.

As he made his escape, he tried to stay in a populated area where there were witnesses. He had made it to the front desk before they zeroed in on him.

Viktor tried to stick close to the rich kids that enforcers would not want as collateral damage or feared they might traumatize if they spilled trencher blood in front of them. The ploy had worked, but only until one of the enforcers went for his leg.

He felt like an idiot. Of course he should’ve seen that coming. He realized that afterward, because in the moment all he saw was movement out of the corner of his eye and then felt the sharp bone-deep pain as a steel-toed boot met his right leg. Unconsciously both of his hands went to cradle his knee as the burning pain and its agonizing aftershocks sent him to the ground. And before his vision even cleared he was handcuffed, grabbed under the shoulders, and hauled out.

They didn’t shoot him, probably because of the crowd of students following. Some of the hangers-on were pleading his case, among them people who he had counted as his friends, ones who had distanced themselves from him in the fever pitch of Piltover’s paranoia. He was sure it would have made more of an impact on him if he wasn’t being dragged to his very probable death. His defenders were ignored. Other followers were just there for the spectacle, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. A last category of people were clearly hoping to see some blood, jeering, leering faces trying to press in closer.

Viktor was able to momentarily spot his ex boyfriend, who did none of these things and instead vanished into a building as soon as he seemed to register what poor son of a bitch was at the center of the crowd. Yeah. Him abandoning Viktor tracked with his behavior over the last two months.

Viktor only realized he didn’t have his cane as the enforcers hauled him past the front gates. But that may have been what saved his life.

The three enforcers who took him to a desolate Piltover pier were predictably ghoulishly delighted when Viktor was shoved out of their paddywagon and only managed about two steps before his leg betrayed him, his knee spasmed, and he fell.

So they didn’t kill him. They just beat the shit out of him and forced him to limp/crawl home while they watched. Their gleeful laughter followed him long after they had disappeared, burning in his ears and his blood.

Getting to the factory had taken hours and every part of his body ached. When he’d come inside Rook gasped, dropping the serial he’d been reading, and left his post. Just before he made it to Viktor one of the stations below began to overheat and Rook had to run back to vent it. “What the fuck happened to you?!” he asked as soon as he’d gotten the lever down.

“Enforcers,” Viktor said. Talking made his lip bleed again and he wiped it on the back of his hand.

“Do you…can I help?” Rook asked.

“No,” Viktor answered shortly. Nobody could. It was all for nothing.

“You’re sure? I could—” Another warning from the machinery cut Rook off. “Fuck!”

“Do your job. I don’t need help,” Viktor said.

He made it upstairs. He didn’t make it onto his platform or to the bed he’d made for himself in the corner, hidden behind some of the machinery. His leg had already given out and almost as soon as he made it upstairs the rest of his body followed. He collapsed onto the floor, a body composed of nothing but weakness and pain, dizzy even lying down.

Viktor swore at the ceiling in desperation.

He had gotten so close! He was there and he had done it! But then it all came crumbling down on him! He got too cocky! He got too comfortable! He should have been more cautious after the revolution collapsed!

Now here he was…

And what did he do from here?

That thought made the pit of his stomach fall out. Because what could he possibly do from here?

He didn’t know how long he lay there mouth tasting of failure, bile, and blood before he heard a high pitched voice talking to, he assumed, Rook. There was the click of a cane on the stairs. He didn’t know who it could be, but he didn’t have the energy to hide.

Only Rook and a couple of other workers knew Viktor was living there. He had been sneaking into the factory since he was about 12 and he needed a place where people weren’t and the doctor’s cave…well. The doctor’s cave was no longer an option. But after Viktor’s parents died and he was attending the Academy it had stopped being an escape and became a necessity. Rook and the other two workers agreed to let him stay after he fixed some of the equipment that the factory’s owners were ignoring. The same equipment that had ripped Rook’s arm off three years earlier. And that was the arrangement, Viktor did repairs and he could stay. But he doubted the factory’s owners would be amiable.

Viktor just tipped his head back to look at the top of the stair and waited to be inevitably discovered.

He did not expect to see the dean of the Academy appear, carrying his cane like a mage’s staff, with a fluffy little poro at his heels.

“Ah, you must be Viktor!” Heimerdinger said with something like triumph.

Viktor firmly believed that pain could be bad enough you started to see things. Brains were very easy to trick. He had gotten spots and stars in his vision before. He had them now. But he had never had a full-fledged hallucination. And it took everything in his power not to ask this Heimerdinger if he was actually there.

The vision of the dean did not fade, in fact he came closer. So still without moving, still looking at Heimerdinger and his poro upside down he weakly replied, “yeah.”

“Your friend downstairs presents the curious conundrum that you were here all day, while acknowledging ‘they’ saw you somewhere else. It could be an exciting riddle, but I think he may just be, as I believe they say, covering your ass?”

He couldn’t manage a reply to that with any sort of speed. His brain was still several steps back, trying to fully accept that the dean of the Academy and the head of the council was standing over him.

Heimerdinger sighed and gave him a very kind smile from behind his mustache. “You’ve had quite the day, my boy,” he said gently.

“You could say that,” Viktor agreed. Heimerdinger was now close enough to offer Viktor his cane back. He happily took it, clinging desperately to it like someone might take it away again.

“I spoke to your teachers today, Viktor…” he said. Viktor could not imagine where this was going, but as he listened he used his cane to get upright enough to sit against the wall, which was slightly less humiliating than talking to the dean while lying flat on his back. “They all had wonderful things to say about you. I heard that you and your biochemistry professor had some big plans, and he defended your intentions in, how did he say it? Ah, yes, taking the TA down a peg. Both he and Dr Damarlo say you are one of their best students. Oh, and she showed me your latest exam, the one where you were trying to prove Von Yipp’s conjecture…any special reason for that?”

Viktor shrugged and immediately regretted it, wincing in pain. The poro came up beside him and nuzzled against the hand that wasn’t on his cane and Viktor absently petted it. “There was still time before the test was going to be collected.”

“So you decided to try your hand at one of algebra’s great unsolved problems?”

“Yes?”

Heimerdinger smiled at him with such fondness Viktor felt it in his chest. “She thinks you might be onto something. I need to take a longer look but at a glance it is very impressive!”

“Thank-thank you,” he stammered.

“You’re physics marks are always among the highest in the class. Your history teacher wants you to speak more because your assignments are well thought out. Your linear algebra teacher says they saw you helping a struggling student with his assignment. Sana, the librarian, defends your name to the last. She’s the one who saved your cane, by the way.

You’ve never been brought up on disciplinary charges. You’ve never had anything confiscated. You don’t even sneak food into the library…”

That last part wasn’t true, but Viktor was glad he was good at hiding it.

“What I mean to say is, you were an ideal student. Except, of course, you weren’t a student at all. May I inquire why you didn’t take the entrance exam, my boy?”

Viktor would have gestured around them but the poro and his cane were more important. The fact that he was living in a factory should have been proof enough that he didn’t have the money for the test, let alone the Academy afterward.

When Professor Heimerdinger continued to look at Viktor for an answer Viktor said, “my family didn’t have the money for the exam.” He did not say that they did have enough for a second-hand uniform or that that was the last thing purchased with his parents’ hard earned money.

“You could have applied for a patron! There are many houses who are willing to help out promising students!”

“The houses are very selective, sir,” Viktor said.

“What could that mean?”

“There aren’t any other students from the Undercity at the Academy,” Viktor said. The patrons, like everyone else in Piltover, stuck to their own.

“Oh, I’m sure that can’t be right,” Heimerdinger said.

So he had no idea what was going on outside of the council chamber.

“Ah, yes! I nearly forgot! The baker in the market gave me this for you,” Professor Heimerdinger offered what was clearly a slice of Varray’s anise cake, a particular favorite of Viktor’s. And the fact that he hadn’t eaten since early that morning suddenly became incredibly pressing.

He leaned his cane against the wall and took the proffered pastry. “Thank you.”

“No need, I’m only the messenger.”

Viktor bit into the cake, the poro sniffed around the paper, and Heimerdinger tapped Viktor’s cane. “Did you make this?”

“Yes,” he said, trying to at least obscure his mouth with his hand if he was going to talk with it full in front of the dean of the Academy.

“It’s an impressive little mechanism at the top. But it would be easier if the handle was lighter.”

“It’s for grabbing,” he said, through his cake.

“For what?”

He swallowed thickly, trying to get down a too large bite, desperately hoping that after all this he didn’t die choking. He stopped petting the poro, who adorably protested, but he needed a free hand and only had the two. He took the cane and hooked the handle over a pipe overhead. Then let it go so the weight and shape kept it balanced. “Grabbing. The walkways in the Undercity are eh, not always the best maintained. Or actually even walkways in some cases. But I also like to have a hand free so the cane itself has a hollow part to hi—” “hide” was probably too harsh a word for this conversation, “to put things in.”

“That’s very impressive!”

“It’s nothing really,” he said. Although he found himself smiling for the first time in what felt like days. Which, along with the sugar, was not helping with the pain from his split lip.

Heimerdinger stepped out onto Viktor’s platform. “Oh my goodness! You have a beautiful view of the Undercity from here.”

“It is.” Then after a moment he said, “most Pil—people from Piltover wouldn’t use that word.”

“Which?”

“‘Beautiful’. The Undercity doesn’t have towers or airships, but it’s far from a wasteland…” he realized he had no way out of this sentence and muttered, “I like it too.”

“The hum of the machinery, the elegant architecture of this building, the view of the city beyond. This is a veritable steel oasis, Viktor.”

He liked the term an embarrassing amount, but it was so apt. This was his steel oasis and he would never be able to think of it as anything else.

“What were you hoping to achieve?” Heimerdinger asked, breaking him from his reverie.

“At the Academy?”

“And afterward. Filters was something I heard?”

“Professor, did you know when enforcers come into the Undercity they wear respirators?”

“No,” he said, sounding genuine again.

Viktor slumped back against the wall. Of course not. “I want to help people and with the education and resources from the Academy, I could do that. I could make the world a better place.”

“That’s very admirable.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, feeling heavy and queasy. He offered the poro the rest of the cake which it delightedly consumed. “I can’t do it from down here.” He swallowed over the knot in his throat, “I’ll have to figure something else out.”

Heimerdinger looked at him for a long moment and said, “do you have any plans now?”

“No,” he said honestly.

“Well, I’d like to offer you a job.”

Viktor took it before Heimerdinger even finished the word “assistant”.